Do assortative preferences contribute to assortative mating for adiposity?

Assortative mating for adiposity, whereby levels of adiposity in romantic partners tend to be positively correlated, has implications for population health due to the combined effects of partners' levels of adiposity on fertility and/or offspring health. Although assortative preferences for cues of adiposity, whereby leaner people are inherently more attracted to leaner individuals, have been proposed as a factor in assortative mating for adiposity, there have been no direct tests of this issue. Because of this, and because of recent work suggesting that facial cues of adiposity convey information about others' health that may be particularly important for mate preferences, we tested the contribution of assortative preferences for facial cues of adiposity to assortative mating for adiposity (assessed from body mass index, BMI) in a sample of romantic couples. Romantic partners' BMIs were positively correlated and this correlation was not due to the effects of age or relationship duration. However, although men and women with leaner partners showed stronger preferences for cues of low levels of adiposity, controlling for these preferences did not weaken the correlation between partners' BMIs. Indeed, own BMI and preferences were uncorrelated. These results suggest that assortative preferences for facial cues of adiposity contribute little (if at all) to assortative mating for adiposity.     

The costs and benefits of testing text materials

Tests have been shown to improve the later recall of tested information, a result known as the testing effect. Tests, however, can also impair the later recall of related information, an effect known as retrieval-induced forgetting. Although retrieval-induced forgetting has been demonstrated using a wide variety of materials, recent work suggests that learning information in the context of a coherent text passage may afford protection from retrieval-induced forgetting. In four experiments we explored the conditions under which retrieval-induced forgetting does and does not occur with such materials. We found that two factors—the coherence of the to-be-learned material and the competitiveness of retrieval practice—are important in determining whether retrieval-induced forgetting does or does not occur. Furthermore, even if retrieval-induced forgetting does occur, having the opportunity to restudy the forgotten information can prevent that forgetting from persisting. Taken together, these findings provide greater understanding of the costs and benefits of testing text materials, with possible implications for the optimisation of testing as a tool for learning in educational contexts.     

Face aftereffects suggest interdependent processing of expression and sex and of expression and race

Bruce and Young (1986) proposed that functionally different aspects of faces (e.g., sex, identity, and expression) are processed independently. Although interdependent processing of identity and expression and of identity and sex have been demonstrated previously, evidence for interdependent processing of sex and expression is equivocal. Using a visual adaptation paradigm, we show that expression aftereffects can be simultaneously induced in different directions along anger–fear continua for male and female faces (Experiment 1) and for East Asian and Black African faces (Experiment 2). These findings for sex- and race-contingent expression aftereffects suggest that processing of expression is interdependent with processing of sex and race and are therefore problematic for models of face perception that have emphasized independent processing of functionally different aspects of faces. By contrast, our findings are consistent with models of face processing that propose that invariant physical aspects of faces and changeable social cues can be processed interdependently.     

Adaptation reinforces preferences for correlates of attractive facial cues

It is generally thought that experience with faces recalibrates preferences to match the population average for recently encountered exemplars. Here, however, we demonstrate that viewing faces biases recalibration of preferences towards characteristics that are common to the more attractive faces that were encountered, rather than characteristics of the unbiased population average. Furthermore, this bias in recalibration of preferences was abolished when participants’ attention was directed away from the attractive faces, suggesting it is a consequence of the tendency to look longer and more often at attractive faces than at relatively unattractive faces. These findings suggest a perceptual mechanism that may reinforce directional selection for nonaverage attractive facial characteristics and their correlates, rather than driving stabilizing selection for average traits.     

Modeling Time-Dependent Association in Longitudinal Data: A Lag as Moderator Approach

We describe a straightforward, yet novel, approach to examine time-dependent association between variables. The approach relies on a measurement-lag research design in conjunction with statistical interaction models. We base arguments in favor of this approach on the potential for better understanding the associations between variables by describing how the association changes with time. We introduce a number of different functional forms for describing these lag-moderated associations, each with a different substantive meaning. Finally, we use empirical data to demonstrate methods for exploring functional forms and model fitting based on this approach.     

Paying attention to distress: What's wrong with rumination?

We explored the notion—derived from conceptualisations of mindfulness—that what makes attention to distress harmful is negative judgement about it. In Study 1 we examined factors of Nolen-Hoeksema's Ruminative Response Scale (RRS). A “Brooding” scale included items describing negative judgements of experience, and a “Reflection” scale, comprised items describing analysis of thoughts and feelings without obvious judgement. Correlations of Reflection with depression and thought suppression were lower than those for Brooding, but still significant, perhaps because all items implied some judgement. In Study 2, items were reworded to de-emphasise evaluative judgements (RRS-nonjudging) and compared to the original RRS. Although the factor structures of the original and RRS-nonjudging versions were essentially identical, the RRS-nonjudging Reflection scale was uncorrelated with depression and thought suppression, and was more highly correlated with emotional processing than was the original Reflection scale.     

Ad hoc category restructuring

Participants learned to classify seemingly arbitrary words into categories that also corresponded to ad hoc categories (see, e.g., Barsalou, 1983). By adapting experimental mechanisms previously used to study knowledge restructuring in perceptual categorization, we provide a novel account of how experimental and preexperimental knowledge interact. Participants were told of the existence of the ad hoc categories either at the beginning or the end of training. When the ad hoc labels were revealed at the end of training, participants switched from categorization based on experimental learning to categorization based on preexperimental knowledge in some, but not all, circumstances. Important mediators of the extent of that switch were the amount of performance error experienced during prior learning and whether or not prior knowledge was in conflict with experimental learning. We present a computational model of the trade-off between preexperimental knowledge and experimental learning that accounts for the main results.     

Prototype-distortion category learning: a two-phase learning process across a distributed network

This paper reviews a body of work conducted in our laboratory that applies functional magnetic resonance imaging (fMRI) to better understand the biological response and change that occurs during prototype-distortion learning. We review results from two experiments (Little, Klein, Shobat, McClure, & Thulborn, 2004; Little & Thulborn, 2005) that provide support for increasing neuronal efficiency by way of a two-stage model that includes an initial period of recruitment of tissue across a distributed network that is followed by a period of increasing specialization with decreasing volume across the same network. Across the two studies, participants learned to classify patterns of random-dot distortions (Posner & Keele, 1968) into categories. At four points across this learning process subjects underwent examination by fMRI using a category-matching task. A large-scale network, altered across the protocol, was identified to include the frontal eye fields, both inferior and superior parietal lobules, and visual cortex. As behavioral performance increased, the volume of activation within these regions first increased and later in the protocol decreased. Based on our review of this work we propose that: (i) category learning is reflected as specialization of the same network initially implicated to complete the novel task, and (ii) this network encompasses regions not previously reported to be affected by prototype-distortion learning.     

Integrating gaze direction and expression in preferences for attractive faces

Few studies have investigated how physical and social facial cues are integrated in the formation of face preferences. Here we show that expression differentially qualifies the strength of attractiveness preferences for faces with direct and averted gaze. For judgments of faces with direct gaze, attractiveness preferences were stronger for smiling faces than for faces with neutral expressions. By contrast, for judgments of faces with averted gaze, attractiveness preferences were stronger for faces with neutral expressions than for smiling faces. Because expressions can differ in meaning depending on whether they are directed toward or away from oneself, it is only by integrating gaze direction, facial expression, and physical attractiveness that one can unambiguously identify the most attractive individuals who are likely to reciprocate one's own social interest.